Published: Friday, May 17, 2013 at 10:41 AM.

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Thursday morning, some lucky students at Arendell Parrott Academy were witnesses to a living, breathing history lesson.

World War II veteran and Snow Hill resident Ben Rayford, 89, spoke to history classes in the academy’s library about his experiences in the war. He was invited to the school by a good friend of his, Mitzi Moye, the school’s director of advising and community service — whose own father was a WWII veteran.

She shared entries from her father’s war diary with the students.

Rayford and Moye enthralled Parrott students with their stories and memories of the war.

“It was very powerful,” APA junior and Trenton resident Lee Jenkins said of Rayford’s presentation. “It was very impressive and it’s helped fill me with respect for the man, for all he went through. It made history more vivid.”

After graduating from Newton Grove High School, Rayford served as a company clerk for an infantry unit in the European theater of the war. He described Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, as a “threat to the world.”

“We were at a time in history when something had to be done,” Rayford told the students.

Thursday morning, some lucky students at Arendell Parrott Academy were witnesses to a living, breathing history lesson.

World War II veteran and Snow Hill resident Ben Rayford, 89, spoke to history classes in the academy’s library about his experiences in the war. He was invited to the school by a good friend of his, Mitzi Moye, the school’s director of advising and community service — whose own father was a WWII veteran.

She shared entries from her father’s war diary with the students.

Rayford and Moye enthralled Parrott students with their stories and memories of the war.

“It was very powerful,” APA junior and Trenton resident Lee Jenkins said of Rayford’s presentation. “It was very impressive and it’s helped fill me with respect for the man, for all he went through. It made history more vivid.”

After graduating from Newton Grove High School, Rayford served as a company clerk for an infantry unit in the European theater of the war. He described Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, as a “threat to the world.”

“We were at a time in history when something had to be done,” Rayford told the students.

Before being drafted into the Army, Rayford learned how to type — a skill he said probably “saved my life.”

“I was a lucky man,” he told the students. “Knowing how to type allowed me to work well behind the lines. I was there for 15 months and I didn’t get a scratch.”

One of the most memorable points in his service came when he landed at Normandy, France, one month after D-Day. He quietly told the students about going over the top of a hill and the shock of seeing more than 15,000 white crosses.

Those crosses marked the graves of Allied forces that died there on June 6, 1944.

“They were the boys that didn’t make it,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye.

It was that type of emotion that helped open the eyes of Farmville’s Victoria Oakley, an APA junior, who admitted she was still moved several minutes after listening to Rayford.

“It’s one thing to read about it; to read the numbers and to see statistics,” Oakley said, “but to see his emotions in his face and to hear him get choked up, it brought emotions out of me. It helped connect me with what happened in World War II and it just makes history more alive.”

Moye shared several stories about her father, including one about how he smuggled her mother’s wedding ring pearl under his tongue back to the U.S. after the war. Moye continues to wear that pearl in a ring today.

“When I recently went to go have (the pearl) reappraised, I was told it wasn’t worth very much,” Moye said. “I was like, ‘Yes, it is!’ It’s worth the world to me. I’m looking forward to passing it down to my children and their children.”

Rayford and Moye attend Snow Hill Presbyterian Church, where Moye said they’ve become close friends.

“We became much closer after my father died in 2000,” she said. “I connected with (Rayford) because my father and he went through similar situations. I’ve clung more to him as more of a mentor and a father figure.”

Having Rayford and Moye speak to their students was important, said APA history instructors Betsy Barrow and Brad Sauls.

“Today is priceless to my students,” said Barrow, whose grandfather also served in WWII. “So many of them are interested in this time period. To actually meet someone who went through this, to bring history alive, is invaluable. It brings to life stories from their history books.

“These are stories I can take and use in my classroom.”

Sauls, an educator in Greene County and at APA for 14 years, said, “As a teacher, I can talk about the war. But for the students to see someone who has lived and served in it, there’s an emotional element here I can’t convey in the classroom that was shared here.”

One of the many questions from the students was what advice he’d give to the 16- and 17-year-olds gathered to hear him speak.

Rayford’s answer was as succinct as it was poignant.

“Treasure the moment you’re living in now,” Rayford said softly and slowly while making eye contact with as many students as he could. “Enjoy the present, but look to the future. I hope you’re never called on to do what we had to do.”

Bryan C. Hanks can be reached at 252-559-1074 or at Bryan.Hanks@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at BCHanks.